Liquid container

Abstract

This invention provides a highly reliable liquid container without degrading a liquid accommodation efficiency or increasing a substantial cost. When the liquid container is impacted, the liquid container can protect against damage the flexible film that forms the liquid accommodation chamber. The recessed portion is provided on the inner surface of the cover member facing the plate material. Provided at the opening of the recessed portion is the shock absorbing sheet that elastically deforms into the recessed portion when the plate member is impacted.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION1. Field of the InventionThe present invention relates to a liquid container to accommodate a variety of kinds of liquids, such as printing inks and liquids specially designed to improve ink fixing performance. Such a liquid container may include an ink tank detachably mounted in an ink jet printing apparatus.2. Description of the Related ArtAn ink jet printing apparatus prints an image on a print medium by supplying ink from an ink tank to a print head and ejecting ink from the print head. A so-called serial type ink jet printing apparatus has a carriage mountable a print head and performs printing by ejecting ink onto a print medium from ejection nozzles of the print head mounted on the carriage as the carriage is moved relative to the print medium. A so-called full-line type ink jet printing apparatus uses a print head having ejection nozzles arrayed over a range matching a width of a print medium. The full-line type performs printing by ejecting ink fr...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

This invention provides a highly reliable liquid container which, when it is strongly impacted, can prevent a possible damage to a flexible film that forms a liquid accommodation chamber, without causing a reduction in a liquid accommodation efficiency or a significant cost increase.

With this invention, when the liquid container is strongly impacted, a shock absorbing member absorbs the impact of the plate member by using a recessed inner space in a cover member, so that a flexible film can be protected against being damaged without reducing a liquid accommodation efficiency. Further, with use as a shock absorbing member of a shock absorbing sheet that can easily be laid at a desired position and flexibly conform to the shape of a recessed portion, the manufacturing cost of the liquid container can be minimized.

When the flexible film that forms a liquid accommodation chamber is formed into a convex shape, portions of the plate member facing the thin parts of the film may be provided with a notch to prevent a possible damage of the flexible film more effectively.

Problems solved by technology

This strong collision may result in the film 102 interposed between the plate member 105 and the cover member 106 being pinched between them and damaged.

In these measures, however, since an impact is absorbed by the shock absorbing material being deflected, to absorb a high energy produced by the impact of the falling ink tank requires increasing the thickness of the shock absorbing material to set the deflection range large.

But setting the thickness of the shock absorbing material large limits a range in which the plate member is allowed to move, reducing the ink accommodation space, which in turn is likely to reduce the amount of ink that can be filled into the accommodation space.

Another problem is that the shock absorbing material that is thin and still able to absorb shocks is limited to special materials such as silicone gel-like materials.

Generally, a material with such a high energy absorbing capability is very expensive and may lead to a substantial increase in cost of the ink tank.

Further, since the increased ink tank capacity results in an increase in its weight and therefore an impact at time of fall, which in turn increases a possibility of the film damage.

However, this approach, although it can make the easily damaged film portions thick, increases the thickness of other portions more than necessary and therefore a film rigidity.

As a result, the film behavior is not smooth as the ink in the ink tank is consumed.

This in turn raises possibilities of the negative pressure in the ink accommodation space abruptly changing and of the ink in the accommodation space failing to be consumed completely.

Simply rounding the corner portions of the plate member, however, cannot deal with the characteristic thickness distribution of the convex film formed by a concave forming die, as described later.

It is also necessary to reduce the size of the plate member, giving rise to a possibility of the ink accommodation efficiency reducing significantly.

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